Romney enters critical phase, will talk up economic plan

Source: REUTERS

By Steve Holland

BURLINGTON, Massachusetts

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to talk up some specifics of his economic proposals as he enters a critical period of his campaign and tries to erase a small lead that President Barack Obama has built in the polls.

Romney's challenge is to keep it close until the campaign goes into its conclusive phase next month, when he and Obama met on October 3 for the first of three presidential debates that will dominate the final weeks leading up to the November 6 election.

In a race defined by the weakness of the U.S. economy, Romney needs to convince voters that they can trust him as the Obama campaign tries to raise doubts about the economic proposals he has offered, such as what government programs would he cut and how he would pay for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut.

To that end, Romney advisers say the former Massachusetts governor plans this week to talk up the specifics of each of the five central points of his economic message: beefing up energy production and trade, improving education, cutting government spending and helping small businesses by, among other things, reducing regulations.

7. He can't and won't provide specifics.

There's a reason he and Ryan have been evasive whenever they're pressed for details of their economic plans. They know that if people knew what their actual plans were, they wouldn't like them. They also know their claims that tax cuts will lead to a balanced budget won't stand up to objective scrutiny. It is based purely on magical thinking.

10. Romney engaged in a debate preparation session at a hotel on Sunday.

Ii was there in the same hotel: The Burlington Marriott. There was a police presence there in and around the hotel.

We were having brunch for my mom's 82cnd birthday.

I was listening to my oldest brother talking about how we should just be able to drill everywhere in the USA to get us off Saudi Oil.

Him: "We need Romney to make sure that we can drill everywhere. Who cares if a few cows die along the way?"

Me: "It will be more than a few cows. It will be people with a lessened quality of life; especially since oil/gas doesn't give two hoots who they screw over as long as they get their $$. Just look at cleartop mountain mining.

Also you and I know that the refined product will go to the highest bidder and won't necessarily be used as an American-only resource. Drill baby drill is dead."

Him: "That's not true."

Me: "Really? If that wasn't true then why does the keystone pipeline need to go all the way to Texas; which has access to the ocean...where it can ship oil wherever it wants to? Why not build a refinery closer to the source of the oil extraction?

The answer isn't drill baby drill when the oil is just going to go to the highest bidder and off to whatever country they want the oil to go to."

I believe my brothers understand not to try and argue with me any more, but once and a while they realize I'm not just going to remain quiet when the say stupid shizzle.

12. Tell me it isn't necessarily so

Growing up, I was taught that communism was evil because the state planned economy starved their own citizens in order to get hard money by exporting wheat. The same was true of czarist Russia, and Prussia as well. One reason the Irish were starved during the Potato famine when they were exporting wheat to earn hard cash.

Besides one point, how is this evil being repeated in the US different, the people being harmed by the export of their country riches while they do without. The difference is that Russia, Soviet Russia, Prussia, and England were government control (Irish colony rules) while in the United States the government could do nothing about it, it was capitalism at work.

Mitt, do we really want the robber barons turned loose again, and allow the urban serfdom of 1900 to return?